In Ezra 5, I notice the prophet Haggai was prophesying to the Jews who had returned from their 70 year exile to rebuild the house of the Lord. The word of the LORD had come to him on a specific day, at a specific time, in order to speak to the nation of Israel. What were the exact words He sent to His prophet at that time? I had to search Haggai's book to find out.
From Ezra 4, I learned that God's people were discouraged. What had began with joy with the laying of the temple's foundation in Chapter 3 had now led them to discouragement, fear, and accusatory words from their enemies in Chapter 4, and those words had frustrated the counsel of the king who would be forced to stop the temple-build altogether.
Before I get to the good part, I want to process what these people must have been feeling in that place of discouragement and fear. Just days before (see Ezra 3:8-13), these same people were singing, praising, and giving thanks to the LORD, saying: He is good, and His lovingkindness is upon Israel forever. They were shouting with a great shout, and praising the LORD because the foundation of His house had been laid. And then....
In Haggai 2, even when the LORD promises to bring a greater glory to the house they will build and give His peace within those walls, He had to mix the peace and glory words with the truth that's harder to hear. He first had to address Israel's uncleanness and unwillingness to return to Him throughout those 70 years, and I think that's the part we all most relate to: the discouragement that comes from our own disobedience.
It's easy to sit there for a while (hopefully not 70 years!) because deep down our hearts continue to be attacked with a raging guilt. We sit there long and hard because it just seems that the enemy has won and gained too much ground. Where was my faith? And when will the victory moments that sat in my heart before give me the brave again? We want to hear the greater than the former glory words coming from the One who has delivered us in the past, but the condemning words just seem to hang on a bit longer.
Before I move on, I want you to know that I sat in verses 11-18 of Haggai 2 and wondered what God would choose to say to His people next. Sitting in the midst of the darkness they feel from their sin, as my own discouraged heart often does, I don't want to miss the application because I'm too busy to gain another lesson to teach to someone else. And I love the words He chooses: Is the seed still in the barn? Even including the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree? It hasn't borne fruit . Yet from this day on I will bless you.
Isn't that great? God is telling His people then, and to me today, that He still sees the seed. And not only does He see the seed, but the tree that seed will produce, and all the fruit that will be attached to it. It's still there--that little seed--and it will produce, because as Job said: He is unique and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires, that He does. For He performs what is appointed for me, and many such decrees are with Him (Job 23).
In light of tree-planting, don't you have to wonder if the one who scattered that seed long ago had any idea of the magnitude of what would one day stand in its place? I don't know, because I've never planted a seed intended to be a tree. But I think that each one of us, when we examine our own small seeds of faith, often struggle to see what God already sees as something really big. And I believe He already hears the praise coming, and sees the glory-rest, and envisions the fruit hanging on the limbs of those nourished by something that started so small.
I think He's just waiting for us to take the seed out of the barn, plant it deep within our heart, and water it with His word. It may not look like much now. But to God? It has the potential of being a massive Sequoia.
